Arguments
by Through Darkness
Summary: Eliot and Parker have their first fight and Sophie and Nate get involved. A little schmoopy, a little bit of funny stuff.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Leverage, Eliot, Parker or anybody you see here.  
>This is a response to a prompt at the EliotParker prompt-a-thon on livejournal, over at the Parker-Eliot livejournal community. Come join us. ^^

-x-

Parker stomps into Nate's office one day, right past Nate and Sophie who are sitting at the kitchen table. She rummages through the cupboard and pulls out her cereal. The thief doesn't bother with a bowl or milk, she just digs her hand into the box and shoves large handfuls into her mouth.

Nate shrugs at Sophie and she sighs softly before walking over to Parker. Nate heads downstairs to the bar.

Sophie walks over to Parker, who's now perched on the counter with the cereal. "Parker, sweetie, did you and Eliot have your first fight?" She figures that's the only thing that would set Parker off like this, especially after the team realized that her and Eliot were going to try their hand at a relationship.

Parker mumbled an answer around the cereal. Sophie gently pried her hand off the box and put it down, gesturing for Parker to say it again.

"Eliot won't have sex with me!" She yelled.

"Oh." Sophie has no idea what to say to that. Sophie pours herself a cup of tea and leads Parker to the table. She gets the thief sitting down before she sits across from her and asks, "did he say why?"

"He said all this stuff about it being 'too important'. Sex is too important for us to have." The thief spat the words out angrily. "It's too important for us to have but it's all good for the skanks he's gone home with before?" She curled her knees up against her chest and pouted, her anger softening into the hurt feelings underneath.

"I think he changed his mind Sophie, I think he doesn't want to be with me," Parker said softly as she rested her chin on her knees.

Sophie almost wanted to laugh. Eliot was doing what nearly every normal woman would consider sweet and romantic and Parker felt angry and rejected.

"Okay, Parker, it's like this," she tried to explain.

-x-

When Nate got downstairs, he found Eliot sitting in a booth with a bottle of Jack, a shot glass. He was nursing a bottle of beer as a chaser, and he had an empty in front of him. Nate slid in across from him and raised his eyebrows.

"What'd you fight about?"

"How'd you know?" Eliot asked. He wasn't drunk, and Nate could tell he was barely tipsy. Looked like he wanted to take the edge off, but Eliot's paranoia about getting drunk and losing any potential control was firmly in place.

"Hurricane Parker is making its way through my apartment while Sophie tries to calm her down," he explained. Eliot nodded.

"Yeah...we had our first fight." The hitter seemed almost sheepish, which made Nate even more curious.

"Got that. Gonna tell me what it was about?"

"Nope." Eliot took another swig of beer and Nate stole the whiskey away from him.

"I can't help if you don't tell me," Nate reasoned.

"That's okay," Eliot answered. Nate groaned.

"Look, Eliot, I can't have my hitter and thief fighting. So tell me what the problem is already."

"No offense, Nate, but talking to you sometimes is like talking to a priest." Eliot picked at the label and shrugged.

"I'm a thief." Nate said, throwing his arm over the back of the booth.

"Fine. Promise not to go all Catholic on me?" Nate nodded. "Parker came over this morning and she was lookin' to fool around," the hitter said slowly, gauging Nate's reaction.

Nate chuckled. Eliot growled and his face quickly contorted into a glare. "Sorry, sorry," he apologized. "I've just never seen you bashful about sex before."

"S'Parker," Eliot glared. "It's different."

Nate agreed and motioned for the hitter to continue. "So I tried to slow her down, tell her we should wait, and she freaked out on me! Tore outta my place like it was on fire, slammed the door. I guess I did a crappy job of tryin' to explain or something." Towards the end was more of a mumble, but Nate got all the important parts.

"Okay, Eliot, here's what you do..."

-x-

Eliot was cooking back at his place. He'd left a message on Parker's cell phone to come over so they could talk it out, so hopeful that she'd actually listen, he was cooking farfalle noodles with ham and alfredo sauce because he knew Parker was amused by the bow-tie shaped noodles.

He turned around to find her sitting at his kitchen table looking shy (which was unusual in itself) and sighed in relief. He checked the noodles, flipping the node to 'low' so that they would cook slower. Eliot then sat down next to her.

"Hey."

"Hi."

He cleared his throat after a minute or so of the awkward silence. "So, uh," he started, but didn't manage to get much farther. "I'm sorry about this mornin', Parker, I.."

"I was mad." She said. "I thought you were saying that you didn't want to have sex with me at all. And I thought that meant you didn't want to be with me and that you changed your mind," she rambled. e found himself He frowned and grabbed her before she could say anything else, yanking her off her chair and into his lap and crushed his lips against hers.

She caught on quickly and tangled one hand in his hair and ground herself against him, squirming a little in his lap.

When he ran out of breath, he pulled back panting slowly. "How could I not want you? God woman, you have no idea what you do to me," he whispered in his ear, nipping at her neck as he rubbed his hips up against her so she could feel exactly how turned on he was.

"Mmm," she said, nuzzling at the crook of his neck. "Sophie sort of explained. She said that you were trying to be sweet and considerate by waiting to have sex with me."

He chuckled. "Sort of," he answered, shifting so she was a little more comfortable in his lap. "I haven't been in a relationship in a long time, sweetheart. A long, long time. So I want the first time we have sex to be special and to mean somethin' more than just us getting our rocks off. Okay?"

She nodded. "I feel silly now," she shrugged. He grabbed her chin and tilted her head up so she looked him in the eye.

"Parker, listen to me. I am not gonna change my mind 'bout wanting to be with you, okay? Not at all. I waited a long time to get this chance and I don't want to screw it up by rushing into things. Cause this is something different, so I want sex with you to be different." He felt kinda cheesy and silly saying those things to her – he wasn't big on romance, but for Parker he'd try.

He kissed her softer this time, first on the lips then the forehead as she snuggled up against him.

"Okay. Does this mean I don't have to go shopping?"

Eliot raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"Sophie said that if talking didn't work I should go shopping for underwear with her."

Eliot groaned and nearly started banging his head on the table. What the hell were they waiting for, again?

-x-

Thanks for reading. Please keep your eyes peeled for my upcoming Leverage Eliot/Parker long!fic. Chapter one is already 10 pages. So it's gonna be either amazing or a disaster, but either way will hopefully be worth the read!

Through Darkness and Light /|x|\


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